PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND PRACTICES - COLUMN 159 Topical Index-Table of Contents to the Professional Ethics and Practices Columns
A topically based Index-Table of Contents, “pe&p index.xls” cov ering columns, articles, and letters to the editor that have been referred to in the PE&P columns in Excel format is on the AIPG web site in the Ethics section. This Index-Table of Contents is updated as each issue of the TPG is published. You can use it to find those items addressing a particular area of concern. Suggestions for improvements should be sent to David Abbott,
dmageol@msn.com
Compiled by David M. Abbott, Jr., CPG-04570, 5055 Tamarac Street, Denver, CO 80238, 303-394-0321, fax 303-394-0543,
dmageol@msn.com
CPGs are QPs Except When the Property is in Canada
An Alaskan CPG contacted me about his need for and the cost of obtaining a geologic license in British Columbia. An AIPG CPG can report on properties located outside of Canada and receive Qualified Person recognition for pur- poses of Canadian National Instrument 43-101 for technical reports filed with a Canadian stock exchange. However, if the report is for a property located in Canada, the appropriate Canadian Provincial or Territorial license is required. For example, for properties located in British Columbia, a license from the Association of Professional Engineers and Geologists, British Columbia is required (APEGBC). I pre- viously reported on the requirements for licensing in Quebec in columns 146 (Jul/Aug 13) and 147 (Sep/Oct 13). The Canadians license geologists by individual Province or Territory ust like those US states that license geolo- gists. It seems oxymoronic that a CPG is recognized as qualified for everywhere in the world except in Canada (ignoring US state licensing for the moment), but that’s the fact of life. In the US, the US Constitution leaves the power to license professions to the states.
The foregoing discussion leads to the discussion of reciprocity, the mutu- al recognition of each other’s licenses. Reciprocity may exist, sort of. It depends on which state/province/territory you’re licensed in and which one you’ve got a ob in and the length of that ob. Some states/provinces/territories have tempo- rary practice provisions that provide a variety of reciprocity. You have to inves- tigate each one. Column 147 discusses the way a CPG can get a temporary license in Quebec, but it isn’t cheap.
Geoscientists are not unique in facing this dilemma. A colleague who recently
moved to Nevada from Colorado reported that his wife, a psychotherapist, couldn’t practice in Nevada because of the state licensing provisions for psychothera- pists. Medical doctors have the same problem. Requiring lawyers to have a state license makes sense when they practice in state courts. But when they are practicing in Federal court, they need to be licensed with the US Supreme Court and obtain temporary permission to practice in a federal court in a state in which they are not licensed.
It would be nice to have a single cre- dential that had universal, international recognition but that isn’t the way the world works. There is the argument that a professional should be aware of and comply with state laws and regula- tions applying to specific areas of prac- tice, particularly in the environmental and engineering parts of the geoscience profession. The question remains, how much does the state license truly pro- tect the public and how much is the state license guild protection from geo- scientists in other states or from other professions who think they can all do geoscience.
Competent and Ethical Practice Versus Client Desires
A client retained a consulting firm whose principals are CPGs to prepare a NI 43-101 compliant technical report on the client’s property. One of the require- ments of NI 43-101 is that all samples used as a basis for conclusions in the report must be verified using appropri- ate and acceptable quality assurance/ quality control procedures. The client’s samples contained assays for gold and platinum. The consulting firm was ini- tially unable to verify the samples and asked that more testing be done by a cer- tified assay lab and that the additional samples submitted to this lab contain
recognized standard and blank sam- ples. Inexpensive Standard Reference Material (SRM) precious metal standard and blank samples are available from the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology and were purchased and analyzed using the client’s proprietary analytical pro- cess. The client’s assays for platinum reported platinum in the SRM blank and more platinum than is contained in the SRM platinum standard sample.
The consulting firm concluded that the sample data supplied by the client could not be relied upon for estimating mineral resources and therefore mineral reserves and so the consultant could not estimate tonnages or grades for a NI 43-101 compliant report. The client is unhappy because it believes that having retained the consulting firm to create mineral resource/mineral reserve mod- els and to estimate related tonnages and grades the consulting firm is obligated to construct models and make tonnage and grade estimates. While the client may feel this way, the consulting firm is correct in concluding that without reliable sample analyses it cannot con- struct reliable deposit models or esti- mate tonnages and grades. Competent and ethical professional practice does not require a geoscientist or geoscientific firm to provide interpretations, conclu- sions, and estimates that do not have a geoscientifically valid basis simply because a client asks for them.
Are We in an Ethics Crisis?
Perry Rahn, CPG-3724, sent me the May/June issue of PE magazine, published by the National Society of Professional Engineers, that contains an article by Danielle Boykin, “Are we in an ethics crisis?” Boykin notes that several recent examples of engineers failing to call attention to engineering failures suggest an ethics crisis. The
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56